Simple Wisedom Of Old Rock

–I post this tonight with my daughter’s boyfriend in mind.  He is a 16 year old young man who lost his only sibling, his older brother, to cancer 3 years ago.  Still struggling with this huge loss, he faced last week the death of a friend who was an adult mentor, who passed untimely at 56 yrs old.–

 

Mama told me when I was young

“Come sit bedside me my only son

And listen closely to what I say

And if you do this

It will help you some sunny day.

Take your time…don’t live too fast,

Troubles will come and they will pass.

Go find a woman and you’ll find love,

And don’t forget son,

There is someone up above.”

**********

More of the Dusty Box collection.  Very impressionable music during my formative years.  Considering the tragic demise of this iconic band, the lyrics were those of a simple man – and why I marinated myself in their music.

Can you name that song?  1973 written by Gart Rossington & Ronnie Van Zant

* Double Dog Dare to other Skynyrd peeps: Add more of the lines to the song or name other songs on this album.  (Ahh, try not to cheat and google – )

The pics are from my album sitting with all the others.

Push Harder And Deeper. Yes, Again, Don’t Stop

It didn’t start the way I expected – this year, or even today.

But I found myself begging to have my immediate needs satisfied.  Harder.  Deeper.  Make it hurt until I feel better.  I question if what I am doing is prudent cause I am always thinking of others, my responsibilities, my world – but my head releases to the endorphins and sheer physical pleasure.

I did it once and then caved in to the pleasure and release again an hour later.  Then I went and got a pedicure.  Really?  Such indulgence.  And when Lily, my pedicurist asked if I wanted additional massage on my feet and legs I succumbed again to 10 more minutes of her massaging before the painting of the toes.

The start of my year was not what I planned.  This past weekend pushed my parental limits to new levels of extreme: I love Joy1 and she is creating a stronger person of me through her challenging my ability to love and tolerate and discipline.

A friend who I confide in was surprised and saddened by my lack of caring for myself which gave me pause.  After this past weekend filled with heightened parental challenge, I believe I splintered off into a desperation to find self care – suddenly and without warning to myself.

This morning I spent making quite immediate, difficult and necessary decisions.  After, I diligently ran errands and went to work.

Then it happened.  Like a blind, unconscious and unthinking glom, I drove to get a massage.  It ended.  I sat in my car unfulfilled and then went to buy stuff at Target.  Then I found myself at another massage salon asking – no, Begging a woman named Julia who didn’t understand any word I said except, “Hard, more Hard”.

She did it.  She did it really, really well.  “You okay?”, she asks every now and then.

“Yes, hard, push hard.  Good”, all I breathe out from under the face cover.

An hour later I dressed and drove directly to the nail salon.  Pedicure.  Yes, extra massage, long time, yes.

Droopy Ass Jeans – Then and Now

Ogling A Few Last Pages From The Dusty Box

Caption: In 1980 the boy with the baggy jeans was my boyfriend and I took this photo for my photography class which is why it is on the cardboard backing.  He was on the wrestling team and was dropping weight to get into a lower weight class for a tournament.  In those days, droopy jeans were never seen worn like this and why this was an edgy pic.

————————————-**********************———————————

Damn, I’m loving my dusty old box this week.  I will put it away in a day or so cause it will be time to move on.

But there are still many pages blank in the Summer of 1988 Literature composition book that I have already started writing in again.  It is exciting, indeed, what these words and memories have inspired..

Pretty Sure This Will Get My PTA Card Burned

**another one from the dusty old box in the back of the closet**

The Babysitter

Pitch ’em high

Forget the quest

And raise a scream from baby.

Tease, squeeze, starve and pinch

to raise a scream from baby

Trash the toy with all your might

and raise that hellish tone –

Noone knows he’s not your kin

So make that brat screech, wail, and moan.

(theblogwoman)written 8Aug88

—————

This poem that I pulled out of the dusty old box from 1988 was a piece of fiction written by a FEARLESS and INSPIRED young person with a wicked sense of humor.  When I read this again last night I screamed in laughter remembering writing this – and it still is me and my writing.  I love the rhythm and the choice of words.  The message was just flip designed to make people wonder.

It was in a packet of writings turned in to my creative writing professor and at the last minute I crossed out the page – even cautious of judgment at that time it appears.  But I only crossed it out and did not remove it from the packet….

Perhaps, time to look it up?

I was a psych major after all.  Pretty sure I knew what I was doing.

Facing fears 101.

I Miss Being Fearless And Inspired

That Box In The Back Of The Closet

Assignment on Embarassment

Emily

Too dim, four whited and high

Not easy for fast tickers!

Encouraging all reserved by

Men!  Paltry and nimble and permitting.

Salty boys,

Sickly boys,

Aggravated assy boys.

Right on edge, a tramp-sniff, sniff

Rigid rank, a stank.

Agit-train, pass along, rattle, delft, rattle

Bloch, cough, tumult, go –

Mighty male, turbulation of –

Em.  And her bare ass men.

(theblogwoman) dated 8Aug88.  The professor wrote comments and I look back now and wished I had followed through with him and the creative writing he taught.  It was fearless and inspired.  Back then, I was fearless and inspired.

Unwed Mothers Around The House – More Casual Facts About My Adoption

Skipping ahead like 4 decades, I look back at so many cues and clues and blatant stuff that could be related to my adoption – very well IS related – and I didn’t put any of it together.  Brings to mind the power of the mind and our focus, what we see and don’t see.  I studied that stuff in  psychology classes at college.

I always knew I wanted badly to have a child, to bear a child from my body, to share blood with someone I knew.  I wanted to know what I looked like and I still stare at my 2 children at times as they are growing and changing.  I search their faces for clues of me or my birth parents – I feel like it all must be inside me and my kids.

My daughter was the first person that I could call a blood relative.  I would stare and stare and stare at her until her newborn self was ingrained in my eyeballs and at the end of the day when I would look at her father his head appeared amazingly enormous in comparison.

—– This stuff WAS important even if I had stuffed it away to not hurt my mother’s feelings.  When I started to allow myself to have these thoughts the clues started to come to me.  My brother has never claimed any desire to know any part of his birth story, says our mom and dad are his parents and that’s enough for him.  He even went with our father to a huge family reunion about 20 years ago wanting to know about his history.  This made no sense to me because we weren’t actually related to these people.  My Mom and Dad are my parents but theirs is not my heritage.

So, back to the stuff.  The clues that were in plain view.  The world I lived but didn’t have relevance to me as a little kid.

Our father is an attorney, handled our adoptions and apparently this was no secret.  I didn’t realize this or ask.  He also handled the adoptions of others.  Also as a matter of casual fact, my parents had “unwed mothers” living with them prior to and through out the time period when my brother and I came on the scene.  The 1960’s were a time when young unwed pregnant women were often shipped away from their families for fear of shame, returning quietly and with no explanation 9 months later.

*End of Another Part of My Adoption Story*

I Didn’t Know You Were Adopted

I Didn’t Know You Were Adopted

An odd comment, I’ve always thought when I mention that I was indeed adopted.  I grew up always knowing I was adopted just like I knew my birthdate.  It was no big deal as a little kid with my older brother who was also adopted.  It seemed pretty normal and the only one who ever brought it up was my grandmother, Oma.

I was born with a hole in my heart and my mom says that the adoption agency said my parents could return me but mom said she was sure I was meant to be hers and kept me.  Apparently, my 2 grandmothers laid hands in prayer on me and my body jumped, perhaps from gas says mom, but the grandmother’s claim it was the Lord curing me.  The hole closed and I was healed.

My dad’s sister has 2 adopted children also, my cousins – boy and girl – so it seemed like adoption was normal for the most part.  My brother was named after my father and I was named after my grandmother.  Namesakes are huge on my mother’s side of the family.  Only 3 people aren’t part of a namesake connection.

This writing feels sterile as does this part of the topic for me.  Just the facts.  Me and being adopted didn’t start to feel like anything until my teen years, I started to know more adopted kids and it started to be real.  Real as in there are people out there that I am connected to, people that I might resemble.  I had learned to ignore my petite frame, light skin, hair, and green eyes in the family pictures of people with strong features on tall bodies with dark hair and eyes.

Mom had mentioned to my brother and I that if we ever wanted to search for our birth parents, she and Dad would be supportive.  She loves us so much and I knew this would break her heart and likely threaten her place as our mother in her mind.  These comments never went any further with Mom.

My brother and I were in our late teens when we were somehow talking about our adoptions and he said of course he knew his birth name given to him by his birth parents, hadn’t I also snooped through our Dad’s desk files?  Well, hell no I hadn’t snooped in Dad’s desk files.  That was a bunch of legal paperwork junk, why would I?  Our father is an attorney and apparently handled our adoptions, that’s why.

End of Random Chapter on My Adoption.

Get Your Own Teen, This One’s Mine

Where’s Waldo?

It’s Thursday of finals week for Joy1.  It is her sophmore year so these grades are really counting towards her overall GPA.  Today she has World History and Math.  There was some serious cramming going on last night.

For those of you that don’t have my teen girl living with you, this is the state of the crate I keep her in:

This is where & how my Teen Girl makes herself beautiful.

This is what finals cramming looks like.

From the looks of the after drop-off perusal, she will get a B on the World History Final, possibly an A on the Math final, looks smashing and smells fantastic – most importantly it’s a good hair day.

OM – Harsh Reality: The Latest Terrorist Killing

I never saw one piece of spam by OM. His blog was one I sought out daily, reading the posts I wanted and ignoring what didn’t interest me.

My guess is that enough people complained and probably lied cause they didn’t like this blog and rather than block it they decided to set a bomb off inside and kill it.

The people that targeted OM are terrorists. They don’t care that there are casualties, the innocent ones that die when you kill your target. His readers have lost his extreme expression that each chose to read for their 51,000 reasons.

They may think it is worth it to rid the earth of this blog they feared: He was indeed An Opinionated Man.

His byline was that he wanted to offend every one of his readers at least once, to remind each of us that we aren’t all that. People were offended and his audience grew.

He wrote poetry, shared his struggles with depression, addiction, loss, and he supported his readers no matter what they wrote. He would get angry, poke fun, expose his own harsh reality. He was not inherently mean.

OM was a power blogger who may quit blogging now or he may find a new blogging home. In the end, this is because WordPress is a business and is here to make money – WordPress is not about freedom of speech.

**OM – If you build it, they will come.

Mommy, I’m Finding Little Alive Bugs In My Hair

I made it through the weekend.  It was one of those that started off-balance and skidded and I slid and scraped and held on, pushing through the moments telling myself to just keep going.

Highs and Lows:

The High was 5am this morning when Joy1 woke me from a fairly deep sleep at the opposite end of her bed.  She was kneeling over me and saying, “Mama, wake up.  Mama, wake up.  Mama, wake up” and then a bunch of gibberish that I didn’t understand maybe because I am slow to wake up or maybe it was her delirium from the fever.  I reached up and touched her face and it was cool for the first time in 3 days.

My low – it was a hard weekend so that’s a difficult one to narrow down.  I really am gonna have to say it was early on in the game, Friday morning.  Without personal details, Joy1 needed to see the doctor who is located about 5 blocks away so I thought I would take her over there when they opened up and see if they could squeeze her in between appointments.

They said no way and referred us to a walk in clinic at the drug store.  This was upsetting because Joy1 had a fever but we headed to the clinic.  The clinic was unable to help us but referred us to an urgent care nearby.  At the urgent care, we were told that they did not take our insurance but we could pay cash.  We headed back to our primary physician and I begged but the fellow behind the counter had a firm No for me and reluctantly put us on the calendar for Monday morning.

My baby girl was feeling awful and I was helpless, a mother’s greatest low.

So, we had to ride the weekend out without the antibiotics that I knew she needed.  We struggled through the next 2 days, Joy2 content with his gaming and texting friends.  Joy1 was able to take Advil for the first 24 hours which helped keep the fever down and her able to drink and eat.  Unfortunately, ick caught up with us sometime Saturday and there would be nothing good until 5am Sunday morning.

8am – The fever had gone and I decided to go into work for a few hours, home by noon.  On my way home, I got a text from Joy1: “Mommy I’m finding little alive bugs in my hair I’m pulling them out please come home”.

She can be a little OCD and too often wants me to check her head cause it itches.  I texted her back to take a shower, wash her hair and I would be home shortly.  Thinking the shower would make her feel better, imagine my surprise when viola – lice.  Really?

To the store, lice kit.

Home, lice shampoo, wait, rinse, the dreaded combing the nits with the smelly gel and tiny comb.  Joy1 has hair to her waist so this was ridiculous.  The whole time I’m thinking that I’ve been within arms reach of her for the last 48 hours.  Me, too?  And to top it off, we had played musical beds over the weekend so we know what that means.

I finished the stanky lice treatment and slathered her long hair with coconut oil and wrapped her head in a towel, her body in a blanket and told her to lie in the hall and handed her an iphone.  Yay, snapchat.

While she lay in the hallway, Joy2 went over to Dad’s house, and Mama took a deep breath and started:

• 11 loads of laundry, beds, towels, blankets…
• vacuumed all the carpets
• lice sprayed the furniture
• another trip to drugstore for more spray and detergent
• lice sprayed the carpets
• remade all of the beds

Managed dinner, dishes, trash, and finished the last of the laundry: 9pm

Now it’s 11:30pm Sunday night and pup is asleep next to me, Joys are asleep in their beds.  Monday will start like every other week as if this had been any other weekend.  And when somebody asks, I’ll say, “It was good thanks.  How was your weekend?”